Italy is pressing for the release of a journalist detained in Tehran for over a week, its defense minister said on Friday, weeks after Rome arrested an Iranian citizen in connection with a drone strike in Jordan that killed three US troops.
Cecilia Sala, 29, reports for Italian daily Il Foglio and podcast publisher Chora Media, which said she was arrested on December 19 while working in Iran with a valid journalist visa.
The Islamic Republic has since its inception sought to trade foreign detainees with host governments in exchange for prisoners or economic and political concessions.
Iran denies it engages in hostage diplomacy and has yet to comment on Sala's case.
Italy's Defense Minister called her detention "unacceptable", but said only political talks and not popular outrage could win her freedom.
"Negotiations with Iran cannot be resolved, unfortunately, with the involvement of Western public opinion and with the strength of popular indignation but only with high-level political and diplomatic action," Guido Crosseto wrote on X.
Italy's foreign ministry said it had been "following the case with the utmost attention since its inception." The ministry, it added, "has worked with the Iranian authorities to clarify Sala's legal situation and verify the conditions of her detention."
Italy's ambassador in Iran had visited her in detention and relayed information about her conditions back to her family, the ministry added without elaborating.
Chora Media said Sala is being held in solitary confinement at Tehran’s Evin prison with no explanation for her detention.
“Her free voice has been silenced, and neither Italy nor Europe can tolerate this arbitrary arrest. Cecilia Sala must be freed immediately,” the company said, launching a #FreeCecilia campaign on social media.
The newspaper Il Foglio criticized her detention.
"Cecilia was in Iran, with a regular visa, to report on a country she knows and loves, a country in which information is suffocated by repression," it said in a statement.
"Journalism is not a crime," it added.
Iran has not commented on her arrest, the reasons for which remain unclear.
Jordan drone attack
Iran last week summoned a senior Italian diplomat and the Swiss ambassador in Tehran, who represents US interests in the country, over their countries' arrest of two Iranian nationals, Iranian media reported.
Tehran has been trying to secure the release of Iranian citizen Mohammad Abedini, who was arrested at Milan airport over his involvement in a drone strike in Jordan earlier this year that killed US troops, IRGC-affiliated Tasnim News Agency reported last week.
Earlier this month, the US Justice Department charged Abedini and another Iranian, Mahdi Mohammad Sadeghi - who was arrested in the United States - with conspiring to export sensitive US technology to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
The technology was used in the navigation systems for the drone strike on the US counter-terrorism outpost in the Eastern Jordanian desert, in the deadliest attack on American personnel in 14 months of Mideast turmoil.
Iran last week summoned the Swiss ambassador in Tehran, who represents US interests in the country, and a senior Italian diplomat over their arrest by the United States and Italy, Reuters reported citing Iranian media.
'These are their actions'
Additionally, after the outbreak of nationwide protests over the death in custody of Mahsa Amini in mid-September 2022, Iran had detained dozens of foreign nationals including from France, Germany, Italy, Poland and the Netherlands.
Italian Instagram travel influencer Alessia Piperno was among those arrested during the protests.
At the time, Iranian authorities accused external forces—particularly the United States and its allies—of fueling the nationwide protests.
Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Hannah Neumann denounced Sala's detention as “another assault on media freedom, on women, on international law.”
She wrote on X:“For all those still saying: ‘We need to judge them by their actions’ – these are their actions."
